Quinn & King

9 00_Widgegnaw

It was no surprise that Uncle confiscated my phone once I reached home. Even I thought I deserved it. I had promised him I wouldn't get distracted gaming. But here I was hanging out at the PC cafe after Hagwon. It was pretty late and I was surprised he came back home just to do that. Then, he went back to work.

I returned to Ji Woo's place again the next day, with the worksheets I had left on his desk. To my surprise, there was already a stack of worksheets outside his door.

I knocked on his door, trying to get him to communicate. But when there was no answer, all I did was thank him before leaving with the stack of worksheets. I returned to school after, only because it was extremely heavy. Then, went through my usual cleanup punishment.

Just as I was leaving, Miss Yang handed me more worksheets. I did try to protest, but that woman was insistent I take it. So I left it in his desk in the classroom. That was tomorrow's problem.

As if it had become routine, I returned to Ji Woo's home again the next day to hand over his assignments and retrieve the previous ones. He was still not responding to me in real life but surprisingly, he was willing to text in-game. Albeit, he probably doesn't know who I am.

00_Widgegnaw: You called me out in the game the other day. Who are you? How do you know my name?!

Me: It's in your username.

00_Widgegnaw: ...

Me: So your name is really Wang Ji Woo? Who does that!

00_Widgegnaw: Well... The other names were taken!

Me: And what were the choices?

00_Widgegnaw: ...

00_Widgegnaw: wooking

Me: ROFL how's that better?

So yeah, our conversations were mostly me teasing him afterwards before moving on to other random topics. We even teamed up to play in the arena. He was definitely easier to talk to online than in real life.

Also, how did I confirm it was him? From snippets of what he told me about his life. It all matched up.

The only downside was that I could only reply after school, in the PC Cafe. Uncle had confiscated my smartphone again but he seemed to forget my next favorite place, the PC Cafe.

Or, at least I thought he had forgotten.

But no, I was proven wrong yet again when he sent some of his goons to pick me up after school, not allowing me anywhere near the PC cafe, even on days I didn't have Hagwon.

Uncle was sneaky in that sense.

Anyway, it had been a few days since I had opened my game. I couldn't go to my usual PC Cafes either since Uncle had his men watching me. If I even take one step towards the PC Cafe, they would immediately whisk me away, back home.

It's suffocating but Uncle has done this since I was 9. But the thing was, he doesn't do this all the time. He only assigns his goons to watch me during specific times. Like now, he assigned his men to watch me, only because I had betrayed his trust and had gone to play games instead of heading home after Hagwon. Also, I'm technically grounded again.

Surprisingly, they didn't bother to stop me whenever I headed to Ji Woo's place. Having been deprived from my game for too long, I decided to try my luck. Maybe I could play Call 2 War on his desktop again...

I headed to Ji Woo's house with his assignments. His mom let me in and I walked over to where his room was. I reached for the doorknob, and found it locked, as usual.